The World is a Hypertext (Part 1): Conditioned by Hyperlinks
Since this is a longer-form post, video commentary can be found at the end of the entry (behind the paywall).
As regular readers may know, Autumn is my favorite time of year. From mid-September through December I feel energized, happy, and basically in my element. As per my previous posts, I’ve also been making a big effort to examine and work through technological distractions. This particular post came about while I was engaged in my October tradition of screening old Hammer and American International films starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, or Vincent Price. This autumn ritual has become true “down time” for me.
I purposely put my phone into “Do Not Disturb” mode so that only a few people could reach me, and prided myself in watching them “distraction-free.” But this time, in my heightened mindfulness, I realized that I wasn’t exactly as undistracted as I originally thought. As I was watching The Curse of Frankenstein, I found myself wondering about various facts of the film, even though I’ve done deep dives on it dozens of times before.
This time, however, I stopped dead in my digital tracks as I reached for my phone to run a “quick” IMDB search on Valerie Gaunt (who had a few roles in Hammer films, but quit acting entirely soon after). But in that moment, I realized that I had looked her up before — probably every time I’ve watched the film — and that it had become a habit in and of itself. I was taken aback for two reasons: the first was that I was in some kind of Groundhog Day loop where I look up the same information every time; the second was that I had never considered that kind of deep-dive during the film a distraction in and of itself.
I quickly grabbed my notebook and made a note to write this post, and then promptly put my phone on the table across the room, vowing to watch the film without picking it up. I did so successfully, but not without a certain amount of discomfort and withdrawal. Thankfully, though, the richness of those films kept me occupied, and I was able to concentrate even more fully on detail.
Afterward, I jotted down more observations regarding how my “down time” of watching films, listening to entire albums, or even reading books “without distraction” was actually riddled with internet side-quests of searches for information and trivia. Often, I’d have to either pause the music or film while I did so, or I’d have to rewind to pick up what I had missed as I was “researching.”
This brought me back to my adolescent and teenage years (again, all pre-internet), when I’d listen to an album (first on cassette and then later on CD). There were usually “liner notes” to read while I listened. I’d study the lyrics, read through the names of each of the musicians on the track and what instruments they played, and find out where the studio was. Often, there would be little notes by the artist him or herself, and a list of thank yous. If I really liked the album or the artist, I’d be sure to check Rolling Stone, Spin, or Musician magazines to see if there were articles on them. But beyond the liner notes and whatever magazines I could get my hands on, there was a finite amount of information to be had. The more I listened to the album, the more I’d re-read the liner notes until I basically had a head full of facts memorized (I could probably tell you the name of every musician who’s played on a Peter Gabriel or Cure album through the 80s and 90s).
So, in some ways, I was always oriented toward those little details. But now, whether it’s albums or films, there is a never-ending source of information to find, and a platform through which to find it.
Hyperlink after hyperlink.
I was thinking of my writing as well, and how I will often stop writing to do a deep dive on the etymology of a word; or I’ll look up a certain philosopher and find myself going through rabbit holes of biographies, histories, etc. By the time I was done “researching,” I’d clicked through so many different links that I had forgotten where I started. And, given that each click on a link on any given page is actually a decision, I’d hit a wall with work because I had major decision fatigue before even writing a few paragraphs.
It hadn’t always been like this, of that I was sure. I did used to be able to write for longer periods and without interruption.
But after a little meditation and rumination, I realized that my brain has been conditioned by hyperlinks. Even on the printed page, I was thinking in hypertext.
Any word, any thought, at any time could become a gateway into other things. Lines of reasoning have become always already riddled with side-quests of facts, etymologies, and histories. And, unlike the days when accessing all of this background required physical trips to a library to find physical media (or to the store to pick up the latest issue of a magazine), the opportunities to deep dive are now always present. The convenience of research has conditioned my brain to stop at any moment to look something up, and then potentially follow a branch of that inquiry to places that had nothing to do with my initial questions.
I need to say that the availability of this information isn’t a bad thing in and of itself. As a writer and researcher it’s an almost utopian proposition. But it took me a little time to realize that it was starting to take more effort to not go down a research rabbit hole than to indulge it. That is to say, it took more energy for me to not reach for my phone while watching The Horror of Dracula, or The Curse of Frankenstein than to scratch the itch.
I am starting to wonder if the preponderance of ADHD is actually not some kind of pathology, but rather just the way that people’s brains have adapted to deal with all of the information that’s now available. In essence, I think we may have been trained to think in hypertext. There are some of us that remember what our brains were like before this happened. But for those raised in this environment with this kind of access, I wonder what the longer-term effects will be to them and the generations they spawn. I don’t mean that in an ominous way (although given how many toddlers I see with their own iPad, it is pretty ominous).
The most insidious part about thinking in hypertext is that it affects our capacity to regulate our thoughts. If we are constantly inviting in distraction (via clicking links), we become accustomed to always stopping our trains of thought to follow whatever distractions come across our paths. I’m not putting this out there as an excuse for my own distractions, but as more of an explanation.
But I do think there may be a way to not only recognize how distracted we’ve actually become, but to potentially exercise our concentration abilities that may have atrophied — or never fully developed in the first place.
More on that in part two!
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